THE 



ALASKA BOUNDARY QUESTION 



BY 



ELIZA RUKAMAH SCIDMORE 



FROM 
THE CENTURY MAGAZINE 
MAY 18 9 6 



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THE ALASKA BOUNDARY QUESTION. 




IN The Century for July, 1891, attention 
was called by the present writer to the ne- 
cessity for establishing definitely the bound- 
ary line between Alaska and British Columbia. 
The accompanying map, there printed, shows 
the regular boundary line recognized by Rus- 
sia, Great Britain, and the United States since 
1824, and also the new or Cameron Line con- 
tended for by the Dominion of Canada since 
1887. By convention of July, 1892, commis- 
sioners were appointed on the part of the 
United States and Canada to conduct surveys 
in the region in question, to ascertain « facts 
and data necessary to the permanent delimi- 
tation of the said boundary line.» The work 
was to be completed by December 31, 1894, 
but the difficult field-work in so great an ex- 
tent of territory required an extension of time 
to December 31, 1895; and now, by a last con- 
vention, December 31, 1896, is the time set 
for all data relative to the boundary region 
to be laid before those who will be charged 
with negotiating the final treaty. 

In the treaties between Russia and Great 
Britain, and Russia and the United States, in 
1824 and 1825, and again in the treaty be- 
tween Russia and the United States in 1867, it 
is provided that, from the well-known boun- 
dary line of 54° 40', 

The said line shall ascend to the north along the 
channel called Portland channel, as far as the 
point of the continent where it strikes the 56th 



degree of north latitude; from this last-mentioned 
point, the line of demarcation shall follow the 
summit of the mountains situated parallel to 
the coast as far as the point of intersection of the 
141st degree of west longitude, (of the same me- 
ridian;) and finally, from the said point of inter- 
section, the said meridian line of the 141st degree, 
in its prolongation as far as the Frozen ocean. 

2d. That whenever the summit of the moun- 
tains which extend in a direction parallel to the 
coast from the 56th degree of north latitude to 
the point of intersection of the 141st degree of 
west longitude shall prove to be at the distance of 
more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the 
limit between the British possessions and the line 
of coast which is to belong to Russia as above 
mentioned (that is to say, the limit to the posses- 
sions ceded by this convention) shall be formed 
by a line parallel to the winding of the coast, and 
which shall never exceed the distance of ten ma- 
rine leagues therefrom. 

The northern part of this boundary, being 
an astronomical one, was easily determined 
by careful observations made at United States 
Coast Survey stations on the Yukon and Por- 
cupine rivers in 1889-91. Meridian stones 
were erected on the banks of those rivers, and 
the difference in position between them and 
the positions marked by Canadian surveyors 
is but trifling. An appropriation of $75,000 
has been granted by Congress to defray the 
share of the United States in the expense of 
the joint commission to determine and mark 
the line of the 141st meridian in the Yukon 
region this season. 

Circle City, just below the arctic circle, on 
the upper Yukon, and the mining camps on 
Forty Mile Creek and other tributaries, are 
now permanent settlements, with regular 
communication each summer with Seattle 
and San Francisco, by way of St. Michael's in 
Bering Sea, and receive an influx of miners 
each spring, by way of Juneau and Chilkat. 
Over two thousand miners are said to have 
been at work along the creeks and gulches 
of Yukon Alaska last season, and more than 
four hundred men started in January and 
February of this year to drag their supplies 
on hand sleds across the 750 miles of British 
territory lying between the boundary at the 
summit of Chilkoot Pass and the boundary at 
the crossing of the 141st meridian on the 
Yukon. 

The United States does not recognize, pro- 
tect, or control these mining communities in 

143 



144 



THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. 



any way. No geological explorations or sur- 
veys have been undertaken, and there are no 
official reports upon the location, formation, 
development, or yield of this rich placer re- 
gion. There are no military posts and not a ter- 
ritorial or Federal officer in Yukon Alaska 
save one customs inspector and postmaster. 
There is no law, save as the miners maintain 
their own unwritten code. Church missionary 
societies have provided for the few peaceable 
Indian tribes, but even spiritual comfort is 
withheld from the miners. « Heaven is high, 
and the Czar is far off,» despairing Russian 
colonists used to say long ago. Since the 
military occupation of Alaska ceased in 1877, 
frequent appeals have been made for the 
establishment of a garrison at Chilkat, and 
the construction of a military road over the 
pass traversed by Yukon miners for the last 
sixteen years. General Miles once considered 
the matter to the extent of detailing an officer 
to make a reconnaissance. Mr. E. J. Glave 
explored the Chilkat country in 1891, and 
proved the feasibility of taking packhorses 
over the divide and grazing them in the rich 
bush country around the Yukon's head waters, 
so that the slow and expensive packing by 
Indian carriers or hand-sleds might easily be 
abandoned.^ 

The governor of Alaska has vainly recom- 
mended that government engineers should 
survey and build a wagon road to the bound- 
ary line by Mr. Glave's Chilkat route ; and he 
urges, in his last annual report (1895), the es- 
tablishment of a one-company military post 
in the Yukon valley, and a regular mail ser- 
vice between Circle City and Chilkat. 

The Dominion of Canada maintains a force 
of mounted police at Fort Cudahy, near the 
boundary line on the Yukon; its gold commis- 
sioner visits the few British camps to issue 
miners' licenses and to gather taxes and stat- 
istics; its customs officers levy duties on the 
supplies United States miners drag or raft 
through British territory from southeastern 
Alaska; and some months ago the Dominion's 
efforts to provide a regular mail service be- 
tween Fort Cudahy and Chilkat aroused the 
most absurd and unfounded excitement in the 
Jingo prints in the United States. 

The demarcation of the line southward from 
Mount St. Elias to Portland Channel presents 
remarkable physical difficulties, and there all 
the differences of opinion between Canadian 
and United States authorities arise. The 
treaties provided that the line should there 
follow the summits of the mountains running 

1 See Century Magazine, September and October, 
1892: ((Pioneer Packhorses in Alaska.)) 



parallel with the coast, save when that sum- 
mit line proves to be more than ten marine 
leagues, or thirty miles, from the coast, when 
the line shall be drawn « parallel to the wind- 
ing of the coast, and which shall never ex- 
ceed the distance of ten marine leagues there- 
from.)) This bit of mainland has always been 
known as the "Thirty Mile Strip,)) and its 
conventional boundary line w^as drawn alike 
on all maps and charts until the official Ca- 
nadian map of 1884 placed the line nearer 
the sea-coast, and, ignoring the treaty ref- 
erences to Portland Channel, brought it to 
the line of 56° on the Unuk River, and thence 
by Behm Canal and Clarence Strait to 54° 40'. 
In 1887, the official Canadian map presented 
the Cameron Line, which, advancing still 
nearer to the coast, narrowed the Thirty 
Mile Strip to a five-mile strip where it existed 
at all, and broke up the continuous « line of 
coast which is to belong to Russia » (and by 
cession to the United States) into alternat- 
ing tongues and patches of United States and 
British soil. Yet this Thirty Mile Strip was 
rented by the Hudson Bay Company from 
Russia for twenty-eight years. Sir George 
Simpson, governor of that company, saying 
that all the British possessions in the interior 
adjacent to it were worthless without this 
coast strip. 

In an informal discussion of this interna- 
tional boundary line held at Washington dur- 
ing the Fisheries Conference, 1887-1888, Mr. 
William H. Dall of the Smithsonian Institution, 
and Dr. G. M. Dawson of the Dominion Geologi- 
cal Survey, represented their respective gov- 
ernments. The map was presented on which 
General Cameron had drawn his surprising 
line, and the argument advanced that the words 
« Portland channel » in the treaties could not 
mean Portland Channel, because that tidal in- 
let does not extend to the line of 56° — not 
by all of five or six minutes of latitude, it 
seems. British surveyors charted that sup- 
posed boundary inlet immediately after the 
transfer of Russian America to the United 
States ; and on the « fly » to the British Admi- 
ralty chart No 2431, published in 1869, they 
appropriately named the heights on the east, 
or British side, for their own contemporary 
statesmen, and honored the heights on the 
west, or Alaskan, shore with the names of 
Lincoln, Seward, Rousseau, Halleck, Adams, 
Peabody, and Reverdy Johnson. The Canadian 
conferee suggested to Mr, Dall that the United 
States yield some portions of the Thirty Mile 
Strip giving access to the interior in exchange 
for a great block of territory south and west 
from the upper Yukon and between the latter 



THE ALASKA BOUNDARY QUESTION. 



145 



and the present boundary of Alaska. Then 
Mr. Dall inquired if Canada would take all 
Arctic-fronting Alaska north of the Yukon 
River, and give the United States the Queen 
Charlotte Islands in exchange. Later, Sir 
John Robson, premier of British Columbia, 
quite unofficially voiced the suggestion that 
the United States relinquish its few patches 
of coast line between 56° and Mount St. Elias 
in exchange for certain concessions in seal- 
ing. The American sense of humor is evi- 
dently not restricted to the lower half of the 
continent, and the game of « bluff » is a recrea- 
tion and accomplishment alike in the Dominion 
and the States. 

For three seasons the United States Coast 
and Geodetic Survey and the Dominion Survey 
have maintained camps on the different inlets 
and rivers of the Thirty Mile Strip of Alaska 
between Mount St. Elias and Portland Channel. 
For two seasons a Canadian surveyor accom- 
panied each party of United States surveyors, 
and a Coast Survey officer was included in each 
Canadian camp; but the practice was discon- 
tinued. The reports of these Coast Survey 
parties are confidential to the Department of 
State, and not published ; but the general fea- 
tures of the surveyors' work are known. In 
1893 elevations were taken, and astronomical, 
topographical, and triangulation work was 
done, along the Unuk, Stikine, and Taku rivers, 
the points of triangulation being marked by 
monuments, cairns, or beacons. In 1894 more 
work was done on the Unuk and in Lynn 
Canal, and observations at Yakutat, added to 
the astronomical work of 1892, definitely fixed 
the height of the summit of Mount St. Elias 
at 18,024 feet above the level of the sea, and 
its pocition in latitude 60° 17' 35" N. and 
longitude 140° 55' 47" W. This puts the ac- 
tual summit within British lines, the meridian 
line and the thirty-mile line touching on its 
') lower slope. The great white peak remains 
* a sufficient corner-stone for the domain, but 
it is overtopped to eastward by the neigh- 
boring British peak of Mount Logan (19,539 
feet), which is now the highest mountain on 
the North American continent. In 1895 a 
traverse was run from the line of 56° N., on 
Bear River at the head of Portland Channel, 
and triangulation carried to Fort Simpson, 
and along the north shore of Dixon Entrance 
which forms a natural water boundary along 
the line 54° 40'. In the mean time the reg- 
ular work of the United States Coast Survey 
steamer Patterson in Alaska has not been in- 
terrupted, and the careful charting of the 
routes of commerce through the Sitkan archi- 
pelago has been continued. 
Vol. LII.-19. 



The change of boundary indicated by the 
Cameron Line would not only take from 
Alaska several rich mineral sections, but 
our most unique scenic possessions. Port- 
land Channel itself is a fiord of surpassing 
beauty; Behm Canal is justly extolled as the 
finest landscape reach on the coast; Revilla- 
gigedo is the scenic island; and John Muir is 
author of the saying that the Stikine River is 
«a Yosemite one hundred miles long.» The 
Cameron Line would annex all these to Can- 
ada, crossing the Stikine at its muddy mouth, 
and taking away over sixty miles of that navi- 
gable Yosemite, on whose banks four places 
have been accepted as the temporary bound- 
ary in the past. Three times the Hudson Bay 
Company post and the British custom-house 
were removed and rebuilt, until at last, dur- 
ing the Cassiar mining boom, the British 
custom-house was allowed to remain on ac- 
knowledged Alaskan soil, at the foot of the 
Great Glacier, for the temporary convenience 
of the British authorities and the United 
States military officers at Fort Wrangell, 
near the mouth of the Stikine River. Later 
a town site was surveyed around this very 
custom-house, and entered at Victoria, B. C. 

The most beautiful tide-water glacier on 
the coast would be lost to us by General 
Cameron's penciled annexation of Taku Inlet. 
The boundary line, which had always been 
drawn at the crest of the mountain range 
at the head of Lynn Canal, was moved down 
to tide- water on the Canadian map of 1884; 
and in 1887 General Cameron moved the line 
sixty miles farther south, to the very en- 
trance of that magnificent fiord, gathering in 
all the Berner's Bay mines, the canneries at 
the head of Lynn Canal, the great Davidson 
Glacier, and the scores of lesser ice-streams 
that constitute the glory of that greater Lyn- 
genfiord of the New World. Least pleasant 
to contemplate in this proposed partition or 
gerrymandering of scenic Alaska is the tak- 
ing away of Glacier Bay, which, discovered 
by John Muir ' in 1879, visited and named by 
Admiral Beardslee in 1880, has been the goal 
of regular excursion steamers for thirteen 
seasons past. Alaska tourists learn with dismay 
that the Cameron line, cutting across Glacier 
Bay at its very entrance, would transfer the 
great glaciers to the British flag, and prevent 
United States steamers from landing pas- 
sengers at Muir Glacier, just as the Canadian 
excursion steamer has been debarred from 
landing visitors in Muir Inlet for want of a 
United States custom-house. 

1 See Century Magazine, June, 1895 : « The Dis- 
covery of Glacier Bay.» 



146 



THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. 



So far the so-called Canadian ((aggres- 
sions » are all on paper. The Cameron Line 
has been drawn, but has only imaginary exis- 
tence. For a quarter of a century there has 
been complete indifference to the unsettled 
Alaska boundary line on the part of the 
United States, followed recently by excited 
and intemperate utterances in the news- 
papers, based on half information, miners' 
yarns, and imagination, as deplorable in effect 



as the former indifference. Public opinion is 
being misled and prejudiced to a degree that 
renders peaceable consideration of the ques- 
tion difficult. Wild editorials have given such 
hints, points, and suggestions for Canadian 
(( aggressions,)) were such intended, that one 
might believe the Jingo journalists hypnotized 
from across the border, so much better do they 
serve the Dominion's ends than those of our 
(( neglected estate » of Alaska. 

Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore. 



ARE NERVOUS DISEASES INCREASING? 




T is the generally accepted belief 
that the present age is charac- 
terized, especially in America, by 
a great increase in the amount of 
so-called ((nervousness,)) and of actual disease 
of the nervous system. Few have been bold 
enough to question this belief,^ which statis- 
tics apparently confirm. 

It would be tedious to cite the statistics 
which seem to prove such an increase. One 
or two examples may suffice. In Massachu- 
setts, from 1860 to 1890, according to the 
Registration Reports, the deaths from dis- 
eases of the brain (paralysis, apoplexy, con- 
vulsions, etc.) increased from 12.06 to 19.61 
for each ten thousand inhabitants ; from 1855 
to 1885, according to the State census, the 
insane increased from 1 in every 590 inhab- 
itants to 1 in every 369 inhabitants. Each 
new edition of the treatises on diseases of 
the nervous system, moreover, is bulkier than 
its predecessor, and contains descriptions of 
new affections which even ten years ago were 
unrecognized or unknown. One of the latest 
elementary text-books (Dana's) describes 176 
different nervous affections. The increase in 
this country has been especially noted: books 
have been written upon American nervous- 
ness, nervous prostration has been called the 
(( American disease,)) and I have heard a col- 
lege president, who ought to have known bet- 
ter, even though it was after dinner, speak 
of (( Americanitis,)) which really means the 
inflammation of the American, but by which 
he meant this same nervous excitability. 

The causes of this alleged increase have 
been so often rehearsed that it is needless to 
do more than mention a very few of them here. 

1 The belief, however, has recently been attacked by 
Dr. Clifford Allbutt of London, in the « Contemporary 
Review » for February, 1895, and by Professor Freund 
of Strasburg (« Wie steht es um die Nervositat unseres 
Zeitalters?)) Leipsic, 1894). 



Nordau, in his much-discussed ((Degeneration,)) 
has given them in considerable detail, with 
an appalling array of figures. They are also 
enumerated quite fully in Beard's (( American 
Nervousness.)) The chief cause is thought to 
be the much greater demand which the con- 
ditions of modern life make upon the human 
brain. In almost every department of human 
industry brute force has been replaced by 
skill, and thus the brain has been compelled 
to preside more directly over muscular move- 
ments, and to make the muscles contract 
with greater rapidity and precision, although 
with less strength. The workman finds less 
satisfaction in his work; he is only a peg in a 
great machine, and takes little pleasure in the 
endless polishing of pin-heads. Modern meth- 
ods of doing business are such that fortunes 
may be won or lost in a moment, and com- 
binations are daily made involving millions. 
Everything is done in a hurry. We telegraph 
to London or Berlin, talk through the tele- 
phone with customers in Chicago or Phila- 
delphia, and think little of a trip to Omaha 
for an hour's interview. 

With the advent of democracy the whole 
social condition has been filled with unrest. 
We are no longer content in the state unto 
which it has pleased God to call us, but we 
long for something better, to get into a higher 
stratum of society. We are (iaily incited by 
the story of the humble origin of many of the 
world's leaders, and we see no reason why we 
cannot become leaders ourselves. Few of us, 
however, have the ability so to do; and there- 
fore to the striving and unrest is added the 
despondency of unfulfilled desire. In our 
religious life, too, we have been wandering, 
without map or guide, in the wilderness of 
doubt. 

With all this has come an enormous in- 
crease in the complexity of our mental life. 
Not only do we take our pleasures sadly, but 



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